public transport woes

Somewhere, probably closer to hell than heaven, there must be a god of public transport that doesn’t like me very much. How else do you explain the way I can never get home early on the weekday nights when I have to wake up at the inhumane hour of 6am the next day?

I have an unwritten rule of no taxis, no matter what, but I decided to break it on Wednesday after a grueling resistance training and a demoralizing rueda session where I discovered that I no longer know how to turn. After more than fifteen minutes of waiting at various roadsides and flagging red-topped taxis that are invariably hired or on call and taxis that only go tampines and pasir ris (why only east???), I gave up and started for the mrt station. Only to flag down the only one green-for-hire taxi in sight when I was about to reach the mrt station about ten minutes later.

The next night on Thursday was a easy night with a light rpm session (although ‘light’ and ‘rpm’ together is an oxymoron) and a soft pilates session. So I decided to take the long bus ride home, and ended up waiting for over 30 minutes for the horrible bus while green top taxis breezed by in packs.

The two places aren’t that far apart! Maybe a fifteen, twenty minute walk, where the hell were all those taxis on Wednesday???

Friday was salsa night, the kind of fun dance night that I haven’t had for a long, long while. Saw many old dance friends that invariably turned up closer to eleven pm. Although I promised myself to leave on the dot, dancing “last dances” with friends pushed the time closer to eleven thirty instead. Ran all the way to the mrt station to wait another 5 minutes on the platform and inevitably missed the last bus home.

Haiz. *looks heavenwards* What did I ever do to you, O god of public transport???

Never mind, as the old saying goes, 天将降大任于斯人也，必先苦其心志，劳其筋骨，饿其体肤. Although what kind of 大任 requires chasing after elusive taxis and waiting for never-ever-coming buses drove by bus drivers with no sense of time, I have no idea.